


Their Everything and More

by GamblingDementor



Category: Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier - Holmes/McMahon/Lang & Lang & Gale
Genre: Domestic, F/M, Family Feels, Fluff, Mild Angst, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 05:09:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19846252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GamblingDementor/pseuds/GamblingDementor
Summary: Ja'far and Sherrezade discuss children, pre and post musical. Fluff and the tiniest touch of angst.





	Their Everything and More

**Author's Note:**

> This is a two-parter that I'm posting in just the one chapter because it really is a whole. One part takes place while they're married, the second takes place after the musical.

Ja'far only slept well with Sherrezade in his arms, and often still poorly despite that. It was a concern of hers. Hers alone. He kept reassuring her that he never even felt envious of how much more easily sleep came to her every night. It only made sense, after all. He liked to say that she was made of dreams herself and only truly went home at night. She retorted that home was wherever he was and kissed him to prove she was flesh and blood and all so real. Still, it wasn't unusual for him to lay awake embracing her long after she had fallen asleep or before she woke up. Holding her calmed him, his breath quieting down to a whisper of bliss and he often felt just as rested as if he had found sleep.

She was so beautiful in these moments, too. She was never tense during the day, but in slumber, she was especially tender and relaxed. She was an early riser, always woke with the sun, but since he hadn't caught a blink of sleep yet, he had seen every hour from twilight to dawn and the one night felt like it had lasted a thousand and one. Soon, she would wake up, he knew, but he was capturing the last moments of peacefulness where his thoughts could go where they pleased undisturbed. He glanced down at her and found himself smiling. Tightening his arms around her, he nuzzled his face in her hair, soft and shiny when it was down.

How strange it was that he had never known how lonely he had been before finding her. Now that they were together, he could hardly bear being parted from her, even just for the day. Sometimes, he wished she would stay here awake with him to talk through the night. Mostly, he just wished her every happiness and would wait for her as long as he had to.

He knew she was awake before she realized it herself. The way her body regained control of itself, her mind slowly catching up, how she pressed herself into him naturally as she stirred awake.

"Ja'far," she sighed softly. "You're awake."

It might have been a chiding for yet another sleepless night of his, or it might just have been the utterance of a loving wife. Whichever it was, Ja'far kissed the crown of her head and stroked her back with lazy fingertips.

"Are you hungry?" He asked. "Shall I go out and fetch us something?"

She shook her head into his shoulder. Her arms circled his neck, a thin leg sneaking between his, a more intimate, more deliberate embrace than before.

"I don't need anything, my love." She looked up at him as best she could and dropped a kiss against his chin. "I have everything I want right here."

He hummed.

"I know the feeling."

It was yet very early, pink only weakly starting to dawn through the shutters. Today was one of his rare days off. They always unfolded much like this, the hours lazily plucked away from them, devoted to each other only. He had no desire for anything extravagant beyond the comfort of his home and his marriage. Sherrezade was his luxury, his treasure. Holding her was having the whole world in his arms.

"I've been blessed," he said, "with the happiest life I could have had."

"Is this what just a moment of idleness makes you think? Were you so eager to get a day off?" She teased and made him smile. "Maybe the Vizier works you too hard."

He kissed her temple, her cheek, her shoulder as she pulled herself closer and breathed in the embrace of him.

"Not at all. The Vizier is entirely out of my mind for now."

She leaned up on an elbow to look at him as they spoke. He loved her eyes, dark and warm and beautiful like a late summer night. They begged for conversation and adoration. He kissed her and loved her lips even more, plump and pink and the softest thing in the world. She was a mystery of beauty and goodness he ached to solve every day. Maybe he would dedicate his lifetime to it. He doubted that would be long enough.

"What _is_ on your mind?"

He smiled.

"You are," he said simply.

"And what could you possibly be thinking?"

She pulled his hand to hold it close, snuggling her face into it and pressed a kiss into his palm. Her cheek was soft, her lips softer.

"Nothing more than just that," he said, "which is exactly the point. I'm realizing that I have absolutely everything I could wish for. I have you. What more could I want?"

"Nothing at all?"

Her eyes held a secret he couldn't decipher, always one step ahead of him.

"What... What else could there be?"

"I thought there was one small detail missing from our happily ever after…" She smiled knowingly. "Or not so small, or more than one."

Ja'far could only stare and smile dumbly, waiting for her wisdom to enlighten him. She shook her head gently, fondly.

"Ja'far, have you ever thought about having children?"

"Oh…"

A vision came to him of a shy Sherrezade telling him of their conceiving, which turned into a pregnant Sherrezade and the beauty of her body swelling as it cradled another life. Sherrezade nursing their firstborn, telling it stories and lulling it to sleep, and soon other children too, as many as she wanted, for the sky was the limit of this fantasy. He saw their family expand and all the happiness that would come with it, the blessings so bountiful.

"I'm thinking about it now."

He leaned down and kissed her. And kissed her and kissed her and if they were to have a family of their own, they might as well start working on making it.

* * *

The lamp worked in mysterious ways.

Wishes went uncounted on the inside, with their own set of limitations. The hall that was the lamp itself couldn't be expanded, a large room of beaten old gold ancient as time itself. Doorways could be added to lead to other wish rooms, so long as they didn't lead to the outside world, for they were not allowed to leave. Ja'far had given Sherrezade a library, of course, and a bathhouse and a closet so large they could hardly see the end of it from the threshold. They had given themselves as much luxury as they could possibly wish for – but it had turned out to be not much at all. The room itself, he had refurbished into a slightly more comfortable copy of the home they had used to share, the home he had known empty for seventeen painful years. How right it felt to share it with her now. He had wished for windows to give them an artificial sense of night and day and their lives had fallen into a familiar sense of comfort and happiness again. What else, when they were together?

They did not need to sleep, but they could wish to. Ja'far, who had struggled to find rest on the best of days and had been too heartbroken to for years and years, found that slumber came to him as easily as the snap of his genie fingers. Sherrezade had but to snuggle into his chest on their bed, and he could now close his eyes and dream of wishes he could grant her when he woke up. Many nights, neither of them slept and they simply spent talking and enjoying each other. After too long a separation, they craved each other's company and conversation so acutely still that they could not get enough, not after ten, a hundred, a thousand days and nights spent together.

Still, from time to time, he preferred the familiar semi-solitude of a sleepless night on his own. Not too long ago, he had used to stare up at the ceiling alone in bed most nights and wish himself to sleep so ardently that it came even less easily. But before that yet, when he had still had his wife, he had used to watch Sherrezade sleep and hold her against him, relishing how warm and soft she was, how perfect. He still enjoyed watching her sleep now, catching up the seventeen years of lonely nights, but the lamp offered other entertainment as well he could not resist.

The left side of the lamp's inner wall lit up with images from any time and place he made a wish to see. Every now and then, Sherrezade and him had movie nights, sometimes even full series marathons. Other times, and much less often, he checked on the princess. It was much more interesting, of course, but made his heart soar with missing the daughter he had not known enough. It took a specific nostalgic mood to fall into.

Tonight was such a night. Sherrezade was breathing softly in their bed, tucked into a pillow Ja'far had left there to replace his body. He was staring idly at the blank wall of gold that became a screen at a wish's command. Minutes and hours passed. He sighed.

"Show me the princess," he muttered eventually, defeated. "And low volume, please, don't wake Sherrezade up like the last time."

Instantly the room lit up with the face of the princess, showing him images of what would be the present if time worked in the lamp just like it did in the period he had left. This place existed entirely out of time and if he had wished, he could have conjured pictures of the princess's entire lifetime and beyond it. Still, he had been in the lamp for a few years now and that was also the time at which he chose to observe the princess. How far along she had come in such a short time. She ruled with compassion and even wisdom. Under her care, duty and devotion ran deep. Pride swelled his heart with emotion and Ja'far rubbed his eyes and breathed out sharply.

"You taught her well," Sherrezade's still sleepy voice said from behind. "She is a great ruler."

Her hand brushed against his shoulder gently and she took a seat next to him at the screen, her head pressed against his chest. She was wearing one of the thousands of precious silk bathrobes he had wished for her. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.

"I wish... I just wish I'd known sooner. That she was ours."

The lamp gave a loud buzz to signify a refused wish. He groaned.

"It's a figure of speech, lamp! When will you learn?"

He felt Sherrezade's smile more than he saw it.

"All those powers and you're still wishing."

On the screen, the princess was having a meeting with an eminent foreign poet and though the volume was a low indecipherable mumble, Ja'far knew that she could only be entertaining him with her wits and spirit.

"What is life without dreaming?" he said softly. "She may never see me again, but at least..."

"At least, she rules and lives well," Sherrezade completed, nodding. "Or has lived, will live, however you see it."

The lamp worked in such ways that forever they would live alongside whichever fragment of reality they cared to observe, always able to see it but locked inside without meddling with it. Perhaps, Ja'far thought, he had meddled more than enough for an eternity of lifetimes. Still, his one and only child...

"Tell me about her," Sherrezade said. "I birthed her but you knew her longer than I could."

She was holding onto his arm, an embrace very much needed for both of them. He tried to smile. The princess herself was grinning at her guest on the screen, something teasing that reminded him so much of Sherrezade he felt painfully stupid for having never made the connection before it was too late.

"Oh, she was always a clever little thing," he sighed fondly. "Just like you, of course. But proud, too, though she meant well and she had a tender heart. And she was so passionate and..." Briefly, he glanced back at the screen. "OH, BY ALLAH! Stop this!"

The screen promptly switched off, but it was too late. Ja'far shook his head, trying to erase the memory but it seemed that his mind would now be plagued with the vision of the princess climbing that boy's lap like a tree and shoving her tongue foot deep into his mouth. Sherrezade chuckled.

"Now, that's more like _you_ , my dear," she noted.

He frowned.

"When have I ever been this fiery?"

She pulled his hand to her heart, her fingers toying with where his ring had used to be when he still had worn it. Gold and precious stones were ephemeral, but the promise would last till the literal end of times.

"I recall a marriage proposal within minutes of meeting each other."

He kissed her teasing grin away.

"That's not impulsive, that's just good sense, my love. When you find the most precious of treasures," he said and kissed the tip of her nose, "You don't want to lose it."

"Never," she whispered.

She pulled herself up to straddle his lap, her arms circling her neck as she gave him another slower, deeper kiss.

"You haven't lost her either," she said. "Her life is long and healthy and filled with joys." She kissed him again and sighed comfortably when his arms closed around her waist intimately. "And you haven't lost me."

"That was my wish for so long," he said and held her all the tighter for the memory of the pain in the not so distant past. "You're right. She's but a wish away for us to see, forever. That's all anyone can ask for. That's more than some parents get."

Sherrezade nodded. Her fingers were toying idly at the back of his neck, always a favorite gesture of hers to mark her affection. He had missed it. He had missed her so much and so ardently. Such a gap could hardly be filled even in a few years of being reunited. It often seemed to him that it would never completely close and that he would always be desiring her presence so strongly, so wholly. A thousand and one lifetimes truly was not enough. How much less the one they had had.

He came to the realization that missing the princess wasn't even a small fraction as hard as missing Sherrezade had been. He did, after all, have the secure knowledge that her life was and would be safe and joyful till the end. That was much more than he had known. Not to mention that he had here with him half of who the princess had been. Looking at the soft round face of his wife, he saw a glimpse of his daughter all too clearly.

"She's the best of you," he said finally.

"And of _you_ ," she insisted.

Ja'far noted he felt much less afflicted, thanks to Sherrezade's affectionate attention. Later, another day, he might make a wish to see the princess again, maybe replay some old memories out of his many fond moments from the few years he had been blessed with her fierce little presence. Later, he might feel the same nostalgia filling him again and Sherrezade would have to comfort him again. He would take it again when it would come to it. They had, after all, all the time in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Please leave a comment if you've read this and enjoyed.


End file.
